Posted
by
Soulskill
on Saturday August 23, 2008 @12:23PM
from the just-add-water-and-near-infinite-density dept.

eonlabs writes "A new paper has been published on the formation of stars in close proximity to a supermassive black hole. Their formation has not been well understood until now, but with the help of a year of supercomputer time, scientists have been able to model the interstellar processes needed to produce them. The results not only match up well with earlier observations, but provide clues as to how their formation is remotely possible. It also helps clear up previous research in this area. 'The simulations...followed the evolution of two separate giant gas clouds up to 100,000 times the mass of the Sun, as they fell towards the supermassive black hole. ...The disrupted clouds form into spiral patterns as they orbit the black hole... In these conditions, only high mass stars are able to form and these stars inherit the eccentric orbits from the elliptical disc.'"
The paper itself was published in Science, but you'll need a subscription to read more than the abstract.

...ecstatic that it was possible to do so without O(e^n) and taking more than our lifetime.

This type of simulation is very common in computational astrophysics from stellar scale to large-scale structure, and everything in between. The two common computational techniques are the particle mesh methods. It's easy to think about the complexity of the particle problem: every particle interacts with every other particle, giving O(n^2), which is unworkable for even moderate values (astrophysically speaking) of n.

Is parent really a troll? If so, he did a much better job than his parent.

Her parent. In threads, it is always a daughter. Unless it is a zombie, in which case you can assign either gender. The 'daughers' of zombies can also be referred to as spawn (you can use either gender), and the 'parents' of spawn can be referred to as overlords (GP = great overlord, GGP = grand overlord, GGP = dire overlord, and so on).

Evolution is gospel in the world of science. Not believing in the faith of evolution is blasphemy and heretics will be punished.

I'm not a scientist, but even I know evolution is simply accepted - by some - as the best current explanation for our existence, and will be revised or replaced the moment a better explanation comes along. This is a good thing.

Based on the worldview that the universe is a result of time and chance with no possibility that thought in a mind played any role whatsoever. Any notion of the involvement of intelligence is rejected as abominable heresy by the evolution faithful.

No, it is a theory, but by far the best one we have that fits the observable universe. But if you choose to believe the universe was created by the flying spagetti monster 75 years ago as the pastafarians do, or some variant thereof by all means, be my guest. Just don't pass it off as science.

If you have done some research that radically overturns an established theory, (say quantum mechanics) great - publish it. But your theory had better fit the observable universe better than than the established one.

I just want to add that creditable scientific theories exist due to their supporting factual evidence. This is why evolution itself is considered well supported in the same way theoretical gravity is supported by factual evidence.

Note that this is for evolution by itself, specifically human evolution has many pieces to the puzzle (pieces meaning factual evidence), but are missing a few currently. And you know what? theories "evolve" at the same time that new evidence is brought up. So for the top parent, go

to expound further - both science and religion are theoretical. in my opinion, science has more supporting evidence. scientific theories have a tendency to be disproved and replaced, as do religious beliefs (well, becomes more derivative). if any part of the formula is wrong (pertaining to both science and religion), it shows the fallibility of said theory/faith.

Please point out a theory in religion. I gave my examples - in evolution and gravity - they simply explain the natural phenomena of evolutionary mutation and gravity. you give yours. The first challenge, that I'm interested in is finding the natural phenomena.

The same? I think not. Let me know when you come up with proof that one religion overpowers the rest in factual evidence that supports it. Again, you don't know what the hell a scientific theory is at all.

No, I'm no science student. I simply follow specific definitions, and I remain a skeptic to everything. I don't believe or have faith in evolution. I simply accept evidence. It may morph in the future as more evidence comes in, but it will never make it "wrong" - for according to the concept of a scientific theory - hypotheses are supposed to evolve. The same with quantum mechanics - I am no believer in it, so I simply follow what has been proven in the physical world. Can a man walk on water? I sure would like to see it. Is there an immortal being for who I am a servant to? I sure as hell would like to see this person in the physical world, then existence of immortal creators will be an obvious fact.

Not to get too off-topic, but I find the Bible, Torah, and Koran the best collection of moral tales (moral as in the morality 2000 years ago) that have ever been discovered. The immoral concepts you learn from them show that YHWH, God, and Alah did not create man in their own image, but in fact man created YHWH, God, and Alah in their own image.

Personally, I would pick a woman goddess to worship. They seem to know how to take care of things pretty damn well.

if you read my comment- i pointed out that religions are derivative. today, the main three (judaism, christianity and islam) are all based on the old testament. the stories the old testament are a reinterpretation of the various religions of the time (most notably the egyptian religions). i also pointed out that science is also faith based. scientific theory (as well as religion) keeps evolving. theories are replaced all the time. the very word theory: a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or invest

They do indeed, but this faith is not based on the evidence, but on the underlying worldview of a scientist.

A scientist who believes there is no God, that is an atheist, will interpret the evidence gathered by observation and experiment through that lens. He will attribute everything that exists as having arisen by processors of time and chance.

A scientist who believes in an eternal transcendent Creator God, will interpret the same evidence to show careful t

The immoral concepts you learn from them show that YHWH, God, and Alah did not create man in their own image, but in fact man created YHWH, God, and Alah in their own image.

I wish I had mod points. This is my view of religion too. Given the similar precepts among all religions with exclusion to the deity's moniker, I don't think it's out of line to think that tribal leaders dictated the best behavior desired and that was passed along so long that it went from word to form.

What I have a problem with is the fact that evolution, already being entrenched, enjoys so much popularity that it is automatically given the benefit of the doubt. Anything else gets saddled with the burden of proof.

There are many cases in law where the burden of proof crushes those who cannot bear it, and legal precedent is established in many cases, irreversibly, because "you just couldn't prove it". With "statutes of

Umm, in science, you don't prove a theory. You acquire evidence and validate or invalidate the theory based on it. Theories must also make predictions that are testable. A good theory is able to explain, within it's framework, all observations related to it. That's it, that's all. And evolution most certainly must stand up to this scrutiny (and has done so remarkably well... only a few other theories have been so suc

You may find it amusing to use sarcasm, however, it wasn't quite such a laughable matter for Galileo.

I only hope that modern times are better. Given our history of persecution, I have my doubts.

And FYI, there have been cases of teachers being wrong. Just recently in spring quarter in Calculus II, I caught my teacher making a major blunder on a function's graph. I called him out on it, my classmate was pretty much annoyed at my not letting it go. When I was proven right, I was vindicated.

Please, do propose an alternate interpretation of the evidence for evolution WITHOUT calling in some kind of "magical happening" simply because you (or a random book) says it happened. We have observations of all kinds of DNA spontaneous mutations, e. coli evolving into a new species before our eyes [newscientist.com], and many other things that say "Yes, what we've proposed for evolution fits all known facts and weathers the experiments we conduct to test and investigate it". You know, science.

....We have observations of all kinds of DNA spontaneous mutations, e. coli evolving into a new species before our eyes [newscientist.com], and many other things that say "Yes, what we've proposed for evolution fits all known facts and weathers the experiments we conduct to test and investigate it".....

The scientists saw some characteristic changes in these e-coli bacteria and INTERPRETED that through their evolutionary worldview glasses.

Other scientists, with just as many degrees to their name, having an i

The mystery is not "solved", because there is no way to test the hypothesis. It's "commonly believed to be true" is a more accurate description. Ref: Global warming, global cooling, global climate change or whatever the grant-getters/carbon traders/chicken littles are calling it today.

That's stupid. Evolution has NOTHING to do with the beginnings of the universe. See the Big Bang Theory for something along those lines, which has much, much less evidence for it than evolution does.

Evidence is evidence, period. Science works because it takes all the evidence, and then fits a theory to it. If ANY evidence points differently than the theory (after the evidence has been experimentally and separately verified by many, many people), the theory is either thrown out or modified. With your "c

It really disturbs me how ignorant scientists really are about the universe. All these guesses that get passed around as facts until we realize we've been totally wrong and replace broken "facts" with updated "facts" that are still wrong.

Just what do you mean by this, in connection with this article? To me it says that they have a bunch of "facts", ie. observations, and now they have a simulation that produces results that look like said facts. What is your complaint?

It doesn't quite work that way. First they make some assumptions (guesses) which could fit into a supercomputer. Finally at long last the supercomputer comes up with a result which is then used for more assumptions in a BS article like this.

Why? Astrophysics isn't that hard: you just need a good understanding of calculus (differential equations for best results) and humility enough to look up obscure terms. I think anyone of average intelligence could learn enough to get the gist of a research paper, if not to spot errors or produce results himself.

We really ought to teach calculus as part of the standard curriculum. It'll help demystify science and help everyone.

We really ought to teach calculus as part of the standard curriculum. It'll help demystify science and help everyone

I entirely agree; It has gone on too long now where people hear the word calculus and instantly freeze up thinking "oh i wont be able to do it!". Granted some people might not be geared towards thinking the way you need to think for calculus, but I'm pretty sure its a much smaller segment of the population that fits that description than society thinks. Many people hear of integrals or transforms and simply sieze up without actually finding out if they CAN do such things when they apply themselves.

I'll never really understand that defeatist kind of mentality either. It seems to be the same pattern in peoples heads that causes issues with tech support. How many times have you had to explain to someone something that was written out exactly in the error message they received as they didn't read it at all because "I'm not good with computers!"?

To be fair, this is mostly a fault of software programmers: 99% of the error messages are gibberish nonsense, so the best strategy for a common user is to simply

With respect to maths, my experience is that the defeatist attitude is caused by woeful teachers.

I never even got through pre-algebra because I couldn't understand my instructor (well, maybe one word in five) and had a class of about 40 people. Oddly they tried to place me in second-year Algebra when I went back to college and finally scratched up a worthless degree, so obviously I can use a little bit of it.

There's also the fact that we teach to maybe two types of learning out of a dozen to forty different ways (depending on who you believe.)

I had a lousy teacher for Trig and Algebra. It is not an exaggeration to say that this guy screwed up many classes of kids in his time there. I later heard that he had suffered a series of small strokes as he got older, and should have retired or gone on disability, but he was within a few year of retirement. Rather than show the guy the door early with only a partial pension, they let the guy continue to teach until full retirement, during which time he continued to worsen. Kids who were brilliant A st

From the other perspective, though, how are you supposed to describe an error in twenty words or less? People at work ask me a question, and I can see them lose interest before I've gotten more than five words out. They don't understand the problem, and they don't care - they just want it fixed, even if they can't tell you what it is that's broken.

I hear "are you doing something with the 'system'? It's really slow" a few times a week, where the system could be: the internet, email server(s) (they refus

A good error message isn't supposed to describe the error, it's supposed to describe the solution. The right answer is to give instructions as of what the user can do to fix the problem (that includes calling the expert if the solution is out of reach to the user knowledge).

You not having a clue about the right course of action is proof that developers shouldn't be involved in anything in relation with user interaction, be it error reporting,

A person of average intelligence simply can't learn calculus. I'm considered above average, but it took me two tries to pass Calculus I, a C- in Calc II, and finally a horrendously low F in differential equations pressed me to give up. (Throw in an F in physics, and three consecutive flunkings of data structures, and that's why I ended up a philosophy major... where I got near-perfect grades.)

I am of greater than average intelligence and the "calculus" you speak of is completely incomprehensible to me. You must really think highly of yourself if you think that just because you're good at something everyone else must be good a it or they aren't of even "average intelligence."

Greater than average intelligence? What makes you say that? Really, if you can't understand even the rudimentary elements of calculus, why would you think you're above average, and not simply lazy, or possibly you have some kind of learning disability, which would make you decidedly BELOW average in many things?

The paper itself was published in Science, but you'll need a subscription to read more than the abstract.

It's ironic that of all of the ways that we as a society could choose to fund our primary scientific journal, the method we did choose is based on keeping scientific results away from people who are interested in science.

Science is available at my local public library. Granted, right now it only goes back 2 years, but the library only has so much space for periodicals.

I'm a bit lucky -- my place of work provides online access to nearly every scientific journal out there. Public libraries sometimes do the same thing as my place of work; i.e. you can probably access Science online from your library's computers.

Except that most of science that is written up in these journals is paid for by the taxpayers. Then these elite so called "scientific journals" where this taxpayer supported work is reported, charge exorbitant fees for said taxpayers to have access to the fundamental work the taxpayer has paid for already. I think that all scientific reports which contain even one red cent's worth of science done at taxpayers expense should be free to all taxpayers.

People interested in science enter research careers and have access from their universities or research organisations. People who are not scientists but are interested in science will use these resources for entertainment purposes, not to advance the body of knowledge. To this end, you do not need to subscribe, you can purchase the article for US$10.

"People interested in science enter research careers and have access from their universities or research organisations. People who are not scientists but are interested in science will use these resources for entertainment purposes, not to advance the body of knowledge."

Sheesh. With that attitude, do you seriously wonder *why* people in the street think scientists are 'elitists'? No scruffy unwashed masses allowed in OUR little club, no sir. They might be ENTERTAINED by knowledge! The horror! Knowledge must

What are you talking about? They are allowed, you can pay $10 for the article. This is pretty cheap for an article. Universities and research organisation have to pay for the subscriptions. Can you go to a bookstore and lift a book of the shelf and just walk out without paying? Maybe you think the music industry is elitist requiring you to pay $1 for each song?

Also, many scientists have their own versions of submitted papers on their website, if they are allowed, which you can download and read. It is the p

So in other words I'll have to give my email address to YET another anonymous entity in the hope that they'll just send me information relative to the topic I was originally interested in, and NOT sell my email address along with a million others to the closest available spammer who wants to make my "appendage" more appealing to the female populous... What are the odds ?

You know, I am SO TIRED of having to sign up for everything with my email a